Alternately alternately: it's cursed at the start of Halloween, one second after midnight, and then you and your server take action to rescue and decurse your comic! (Assuming these don't get posted right at midnight. Even if they do, that's midnight some time in the US, so at the start of Halloween in Australia time it'd still be 666, right?)

Player no, but it was pretty common in my old group that the character would be in the background. Hell ,even if they weren't in that scene they sometimes get interacted with. Players can forget who is with them sometimes.

GMs too. I would admit to forgetting that a particular PC isn't supposed to be in a scene and they're there anyway. :3

I have never done a special session, as the timing has not worked out (and it won't work out this year either...I have to visit family and help out my brother that weekend)... But I have PLANNED a special session. As it probably will be years before I can actually use it around Halloween, I will tell you the premise. It is using the zombie game 'All Flesh Must Be Eaten', but realistically it could use most systems with zombies. Before the game starts, the GM asks the players to make characters based mostly on themselves, with some increased physical stats.

(Non-spoilers)
It is the zombie apocalypse. Your group has somehow ended up together, maybe coincidentally, maybe you were visiting each other. Anyway, while escaping from zombies, you ran into a mad scientist doctor. He had developed a Super Serum, which enables heightened physical powers (I doubt the average D&D player can handle a zombie horde in melee... Though besides myself my friends probably could. And I use guns...). After showing his own heightened physical prowess, the group agreed that it would raise your chances if you all took the serum, so you did. ...If you would not agree, you were somehow peer-pressured into it.
While the serum has helped, the doctor died before he could make anything to vaccinate against or cure the zombie plague.

(Spoilers if you want to use it)
The Super Serum does not just make you a stronger human, but also a stronger zombie. More mentally in control of yourself, able to control the other zombies a bit...but pure evil. With the intention of killing all humans. Also, Super Zombies decompose at a slower rate, leaving it hard to notice they are zombies if there are no obvious wounds, and sometimes not even then. At the beginning of the game, an NPC who you picked up along your travels dies and becomes a Super Zombie in front of you. It was terrifying, but you managed to kill him. Now, the only problem is you don't know who next could be one.

(Super Spoilers)
Before the game,the GM should individually ask each player (or tell each player 'through random selection') to become a Super Zombie at the start. They got bitten when no one was watching, and died and raised in the same way. While trying to 'find the Super Zombie' leads to players being suspicious of each other, everyone being the Super Zombie leads to players trying to discretely kill everyone else. When the Super Zombies all try to control the zombie horde, the more simplistic minds get confused. Either the game ends with a blood bath, everyone being revealed as Super Zombies, or mass confusion as the zombies don't do what the players want. In any case, the own worst enemy of the players is themselves.

My regular group won't be meeting on Halloween, but I'm considering doing a one-shot for some of my friends - during the day (it being a weekend, people are likely to be free), so they've time to scatter to parties or trick-or-treating afterwards. (Also to distract them from their piles of candy at home, awaiting other trick-or-treaters.)

Exalted 3E is supposedly going to finally drop sometime this week, so I may have them play Abyssals after the Deathlords won. In other words: they play champions and gods of death, in a world where (aside from them) only ghosts remain, so how do they guide the remnants of the world to its final end - and do they go along with it (ending in TPK), or do they find some way to survive the end of everything? Given the group, I would not be surprised by Grim Fandango references.

How all of you in my room? Get out, please. Anyway, if we do anything special, it'll most likely be last second and poorly planed, otherwise we're just going to binge on candy for the night. That, and probably watch a lot of halloween themed movies, who knows.

Well, I finished my first full campaign Sunday. I have to thank this comic for motivating me to actually go out and start playing, and making new friends in the process.
So thank you Spud, and thank you everyone in the comments section for sharing such wonderful stories.

Pinkie, you've already derailed the DM's plans once. Quit trying to derail it again with something that might involve a cake. It will probably force the DM to start making Portal puns and it will not end well.

I kinda wish I had a story for this, but sadly there isn't one. Maybe next comic will let me post something.

Who needs the main overarching plot when you got silly derailer like Pinkie that just self-generates material? (Not serious derailer like Twilight that wraps up entire campaign in one go, eliminating tons of prepared material. That's just bad.)

We had two players go absent last night midway through the inaugural session of a Dark Heresy 2e campaign. Fortunately, one's character was a techpriest and the other was borderline catatonic from having his arm chopped off, failing a Toughness test to not die from shock, and burning a Fate Point to survive, so it was ruled that after finishing medical attention for the maimed guy (cogboy rolled for first aid just before his connection died) he carried him out to the dropship behind us.

closest my group did, (I use past tense because we disbanded a few years ago when our host moved across the country) was a couple times during new years eve we would get together and any time our character died, we would do a shot.
last one to pass out had to run next year
can't remember what had to happen to make the GM take a shot, but there was something

I know the readership of this comic (or at least the comment section) has decreased in recent months, myself included, but I was wondering if I might seek help from the readerbase regarding a tabletop/MLP question? I have a larger post written out, but it deals with deciding which pony would be which Pathfinder class in a humanoid setting...